Re: Spam (Re: Urgent Investment)
On Sun, 27 Jan 2002 08:47, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 02:24:24AM -0600, Michael Stroucken wrote:
> > Given that spammers are increasingly targetting mailing lists,
> > is there an example of a list having effective control measures to combat
> > this?
>
> The only measure that seems to work is restricting list postings to
> subscribers only. Unfortunately, this is also a major inconvenience for
> those who use the list legitimately.
The various RBL lists work too.
One problem with restricting sender addresses is that spammers often choose a
suitable sender address. In my logs of messages blocked by the various RBL
lists I use, I see many mails addressed from user@coker.com.au to
user@coker.com.au. Also spammers are starting to get smart about addresses.
One of my friends recently received a spam where the from address was his
brother! His brother has an account at a different domain, their account
names start with different letters (it wasn't because of sorting addresses),
and there's no connection apart from the fact that he and his brother often
correspond via email and sometimes CC mail to lists.
Such a spammer would get past the sender address checks (although it would
still catch many spams and be worth doing).
On Sun, 27 Jan 2002 09:05, Ben Collins wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 01:51:26PM -0800, Will Lowe wrote:
> > > The only measure that seems to work is restricting list postings to
> > > subscribers only. Unfortunately, this is also a major inconvenience
> > > for those who use the list legitimately.
> >
> > People have been saying this for years. *How* is it inconvienient,
> > though?
It's inconveniant if you have one email address for receiving mailing list
mail and another address for receiving direct email as I do. I do this so
that if I lack spare time I can ignore my mailing list email, while still
being able to rapidly respond to messages sent to me direct. Even so I would
still prefer it.
> It means people cannot post to this list unless they are subscribed.
> Which means a lot of legitimate posts from outsiders (like upstream
> authors, representatives of various spec/standards organizations, etc.)
> would be lost.
No, such legitimate posts get delayed by an average of 12 hours until the
moderator approves them.
This all works for other lists!
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